If you’re buying your first home or helping a family member enter the property market, make sure you’re ‘bid ready’ before raising a bidder paddle or making an offer. Here are three things every aspiring first home buyer needs to do before entering the property market.
1. Take emotion out of the value estimate
Despite a house or unit being an inanimate object, you can get quite swept up in the emotion of choice. How often do we hear, “I just fell in love with the place.” This thinking can lead to overpaying. Plus, when you combine attending innumerable open homes, searching online through various suburbs and adding auction dates into your calendar, house hunting can soon feel overwhelming. Sometimes it’s good to have an objective third party give you insights and information that helps make the decision more clear cut. I can look objectively at the real estate data and tell you about the recent sale prices in comparable properties, and what you can expect to pay to secure the winning bid.
2. Know the amount you can really pay
Your ‘borrowing capacity’ is the term we use to advise how much you can comfortably repay. It not only helps you budget, it can be key to finding the suburbs you can afford to buy in. You might want to live in suburb X, but you can buy a bigger place in suburb Y for the same amount. Getting formal pre-approval is crucial to buying property. It’s not only a green light to spend the money you’re borrowing, it also gives you confidence that when you make an offer on a property you’ll be able to see it through and also not be overburdened so much with your repayments that you’re unable to do anything enjoyable for the next 30 years because you can’t afford to!
3. Selecting from thousands of home loans
When you know how much you can spend, you need to find a home loan that offers you the right features at a good rate, while balancing your circumstances and plans. Not only should you look for a competitive interest rate, you’ll also need to decide the features and add ons you want as well as weighing up costs of ongoing fees and charges. I can lay these out for you simply, so you can compare apples and apples. Otherwise, it’s a maze out there! I can look after this for you, to help you understand what rate and features – such as offsets or redraw facilities, as well as what your deposit and income allows you to borrow, where you can afford to buy, and which government grants you’re eligible for.
I can help you achieve these three steps. I’ll guide you through the process, answering all of your questions, so you can be confident to enter the competitive buying market.
